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TITLE (EDIT)
Big Blind |
DESCRIPTION
When you lose someone, what do you do? Do you move on? Or do you try to forget? And if you try to forget, can you really outrun your past forever?
[1,098 words] |
TITLE KEYWORD
Drama |
AUTHOR
Phil O'buster |
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
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[June 2005] |
Big Blind
Phil O'buster
Big Blind
“Deal the cards, Jim.” Jim, a man with a nose like a fish hook and a face like a hatchet, grinned lopsidedly, and began dealing out the cards slowly but surely, starting from his left and moving around the round table. The very last player to be dealt was the only one who did not immediately look at his cards as he was dealt them. He knew a real player had to have faith in Lady Luck, to close his eyes and be the big blind in every sense of the word. After all, it had gotten him this far. He’d seen many people get discarded and shuffled back into the deck, just like that, but he was still on the table.
The room seemed to be going in slow motion to him. His companions, they were laughing, joking, talking. He felt himself smile and nod, throw in an odd laugh here or there, completely automatically. Their jokes and stories, he couldn’t hear them. He closed his eyes, and the only sound he heard was the patter of cards and chips hitting the table. Suddenly, he felt himself in a state of solitude, there with his eyes closed. His only companions here were his own thoughts.
The human mind…it was supposedly an endless expanse of thought, of anything. It was no computer; it had no limits. But try as he might, the man remembered nothing. Well, not nothing. He remembered Poker. Every night, he would sit at this table and play with whoever sat down here. He didn’t even know where he got the money to play. He never remembered how he got to this place every night, and he never remembered what he did during the day. None of that. He had no present. He had no future; this cycle was all he knew. But worst of all, he had no past.
There was the second card. Lady Luck had something special in store for him, he just knew it.
Every time he tried to remember the rest of his life, he only saw one thing: a royal flush. It stared back at him: six faces, those expressionless ten’s and A’s, the infinite blackness of the spades they were emblazoned with. He had named each of the cards in turn, so common had this vision become. The ten was Eva, the Jack was Quentin. The Queen, he called Mike; the King, Joseph. The Ace was the only one that had no name, but it eclipsed them all. It was the Trump Card, and every other card was in its shadow.
The third card was laid down on the table for each person. Almost there. Just trust in Lady Luck for a little longer.
In his mind, he stared at the hand before him, this Royal Flush. It was the best hand possible hand in Poker; there was nothing to beat it. But seeing the Royal Flush only sparked more and more wonder in him, like a splinter in his mind, driving him mad. Most people revered such a hand as legendary and once-in-a-lifetime. But the man would have given anything, bet any mountain of Poker chips, just to see a pair of two’s.
A small pat on the table in front of him heralded the arrival of card number four.
He opened his eyes, and time sped up. Card number five was laid in front of him. His opponents all looked greedily through their hands appraisingly, looking for all the world like rats scrounging around for some spare scrap of food in whatever gutter they inhabited. He took his time reaching for his hand, and nonchalantly pulled it up for his failing eyes to see. What he saw made his blood run cold and his heart stop.
Ten of Spades. No. Jack of Spades. This couldn’t be happening. Queen of Spades. No, no, no. King of Spades. How? There was no way…
Ace of Spades.
His eyes went wide. There was a strange pounding in his ears. His Poker face was gone, replaced with a mask of shock and horror. He felt something warm and wet on his face. A tear. Almost automatically, he shoved his entire stack of chips into the center of the table. People that he had never seen before flooded through his mind. A woman whose beauty defied description. A grinning man with glasses. A tall, muscular man in a uniform. An eight-year-old boy. He saw places, heard voices and words, saw faces. And even as he saw all this, what he saw next eclipsed it all.
The man in glasses wasn’t grinning anymore. He was lying on a bed, a hospital bed, bleeding from every place imaginable, and burned so severely in the places where he wasn’t bleeding that his flesh had turned black. There was something about a car crash…But even that became irrelevant as another realization hit him. This man was his brother. Quentin…
At the table, the man resisted the urge to cry out.
The man in the uniform. Mike. In his mind, the man was standing there one moment, letting out a whoop of exultation. A blinding explosion, a deafening roar. When he could see again, all that was there was a bloody mess of the remains of his boots and uniform, the red-hot twisted wreckage of his gun.
People were placing their bets, surprised that he had gone all in. The man didn’t care.
The woman and the boy were standing in a corner. They both looked scared beyond mortal limit. He saw something from his point of view. It was a gun, pointed at the two of them.
“You don’t have to do this!” the woman, Eva, was practically screaming.
“Dad! Don’t!”
He laid down the Royal Flush. It was only five cards, less than a single ounce, and yet it felt like a massive burden in his hands. There was shock. Amazement. People were cursing, resignedly pushing piles of chips to him. But he was numb to everything.
Later, he sat in his car, lost in thought. Everything swirled around in his head, a maelstrom of tragedy. Lady Luck had been a cruel mistress. She had given him riches, and taken away everything else. He truly was Big Blind…Sitting in a sea of money, he felt every last bit go from him. He was something completely separate from the world now. He didn’t even know if he was alive anymore. There was only one way to find out.
The metal of the gun barrel felt so cold on his temple. Oh so cold…
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
© 2005 Phil O'buster |
STORYMANIA PUBLICATION DATE
June 2005 |
NUMBER OF TIMES TITLE VIEWED
1774
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